FOR PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN CARNEGIE HALL, 3 DUSTY YEARS END

By RON ALEXANDER

Published: December 11, 1986

NEXT Monday when Carnegie Hall reopens, restored to an earlier glory, the landmark building's newly plastered, freshly painted cream-colored walls can be expected to resound with cheers and bravos. But there will be other cheers as well: cheers of relief from, no pun intended, those unsung heroes and heroines, the occupants of the hall's upstairs studios who have, for over three years, lived and worked through a major restoration. Despite the trials, tribulations, dust, debris and noise, it is unlikely that many inhabitants of the 30 studios (out of a total of 135) used for both living and work space ever seriously considered the possibility of moving anywhere else.

The composer-lyricist Joe Raposo, whose ninth-floor studio was once rented by Eddie Duchin and, later, by his son, Peter, likens the renovation experience to ''having had a studio on the side of Mount St. Helens.'' Yet even when the yellow dust from sanded-down bricks covered the keyboard of his eight-foot Yamaha baby grand or eight tons of rocks were poured on the roof outside, he would gaze out the window toward Central Park and think about the dazzling the view on glittering, snowy nights and of the crackling logs in his oversize fireplace.

Emilia Del Terzo bought a face mask last spring to protect herself from the clouds of dust daily seeping through the Italian wrought-iron gates that front the eighth-floor quarters in which she has resided and taught music for over 30 years. Her space, which she acquired from Pietro Yon, organist at St. Patrick's Cathedral from 1927 to 1943, has oak-paneled walls, a built-in Kilgen organ, a Hammond concert organ (the pipes reach almost to the top of the 24-foot-high ceiling), plus eight adjoining studios with eight Steinways. ''There aren't too many other places where I could have that.''

Then, too, there are the 30-inch-thick walls that enable her ''to play my heart out on the organs at 3 o'clock in the morning.'' For the past year or so Dr. Del Terzo has done a lot of late-night playing: ''During the day, with all those construction workers banging on all those pipes outside my window,'' she says, ''everything sounded like the 'Anvil Chorus.' '' She did welcome the building's new roof (a rubber membrane held down by 100 pounds of rocks per square foot), since leaks from the old one had damaged rare manuscripts, memorabilia, carpeting and costumes (''Have you ever smelled wet lame?'') ''Yes, I cussed a lot during the past year or so,'' she says. ''But no, I wouldn't think of living anywhere else. I remember that when I moved into my first Carnegie studio, I felt like a girl who had been given a doll she'd wanted all her life. I've never stopped feeling that way.'' Among the friends she has entertained and cooked meals for in her small kitchen, she names Bidu Sayao, Licia Albanese, Gabriella Tucci, Roberta Peters and Arturo Toscanini, who fell asleep after a spaghetti dinner. ''He snored,'' Dr. Del Terzo recalls.

Carnegie Hall opened in 1891. In the ensuing years additional floors and a second tower were added. An early advertisement was headlined: ''Musicians, Artists, Writers, Dancers: Live and Work in a Carnegie Hall Studio and Save Rent.'' It went on: ''Your soundproof studio by day becomes your charming living suite by night. A tiled bath and a hidden kitchenette - there when you need them. You live and work in a congenial Old World atmosphere in the Home of Fine Arts in America. Some suites offer view of Park or River.'' (By the mid-1960's, $250 was not an uncommon rent for two rooms in Carnegie).

Among those who heeded the call to residency were Charles Dana Gibson, John Barrymore, Isadora Duncan, Norman Mailer, Paddy Chayefsky, Leonard Bernstein and Marlon Brando. Bobby Short resided there, too, until the noise during the early days of restoration caused him to flee up 57th Street to the Osborne. Still, even he speaks with affection of the building. ''Living there was a joy,'' he says. ''I remember with fondness the day friends came for lunch and we sneaked down a back stairway to listen behind a closed door to Horowitz play.''

Musicians, dancers and photographers occupy the majority of the Carnegie studios. In recent times, traditional painters have been replaced by architects, graphic artists and designers. Perhaps the biggest anomaly is the sleek duplex studio of the Click Model Agency.

None of the studios are rent stabilized, about 10 are rent-controlled and, according to Lawrence P. Goldman, the hall's director of real estate planning and development, there are two rent levels. Tenants who have been there for ''a long time,'' he said, pay $20 a square foot a year; for newer tenants the rate is approximately $33 per square foot; an average studio is somewhere between 400 and 700 square feet.

''It seems that every other day the rent goes up,'' Garson Kanin says, half in jest, of the studio he has been working in for a dozen years.

''I love this building, I have such affectionate associations with it,'' he says. ''I started out wanting to be a musician and used to buy tickets for the hall's upper reaches. Now it's costing me five hundred smackers to go to the re-opening night.''

More vexing, though, is the fact that there is no running water in his studio. In June 1983, the sink in a neighboring studio overflowed into the auditorium below in mid-concert, resulting in a stained ceiling, falling decorative plaster and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme getting spritzed. During renovation, the pipes had to be completely removed, so Mr. Kanin must use a water cooler and a bathroom on another floor. ''Still,'' he says philosophically, ''this is where I enjoy working, and where, once the restoration is complete, it should again be the quietest place I know.''

Editta Sherman, a portrait photographer who likes to be called the Duchess of Carnegie Hall, has resided in her 12th-floor studio, where she raised five children, since 1949. She says the current tenants aren't as friendly as the old ones and she sleeps on a black leather couch, but with a north light and a 35-foot-skylight, an artist can overlook things like that. She misses the old 57th Street Automat, where she sent her children for their meals (her kitchen has been converted into a darkroom), enjoys wearing vintage clothing and likes to tell of the time she photographed Walter Damrosch, who conducted the very first Carnegie concert. What she doesn't miss are ''all those construction men carrying all those dusty bags of rocks in the elevator.''

Pat Collins, the entertainment reporter who is married to Joe Raposo, solved the dust problem by wearing a black jumpsuit whenever she and the couple's two childen dropped by Mr. Raposo's comfortably furnished studio during the renovation. (The family lives in Westchester.) As for Mr. Raposo, he has almost forgotten the sound of eight tons of rocks pouring down on the roof outside the window where he sat playing a tender ballad for a prospective backer of the musical version of ''It's a Wonderful Life'' that he and Sheldon Harnick are working on.

Now, in his studio, he hears gentler sounds again. ''There are ghosts and spirits in this building,'' he says, ''and the sound of every note that has ever been played, every sheet of music that was ever turned.''